There is a spectre hanging over North America that demands our attention.

It isn't the pending Trump regime, although it does require the most intense scrutiny. Nor is it the unlashing of white supremacist and anti-semitic intolerance, both of which should be faced down in every instance.

No, the spectre that should deeply concern us is the radical pressure on the quality and clear sightedness of news reporting, pressures coming from both inside and outside the profession.

Doubts were raised by many about the role the media played in the US election with, among many other failings, its headlining of the politically-motivated timing of James Comey's comments about Clinton's email server, and now the normalizing of Trumpist delusive rants about anything he chooses.

But the problems run deeper.

Emily Bazelon in her New York Times Magazine article Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump exposes the legal assaults underway in which 'libel law can be a tool for revenge' to punish media critics of right wing ideologies 'or even destroy entire media outlets' — a la Peter Thiel's funding of various legal actions against Gawker.

The chilling effect on critical political reporting could be extreme.

Not enough is still also being done by social networks and the media about the prevalence of false news on social networks, whether the result of Russian hacking, Macedonian teenagers looking to make a quick buck, or the partisan dissembling of right-wing activists. Leading social networks have a responsibility to focus their algorithms less on whether content is shareable and more on whether its source and its truth can be validated.

And there are most recently the aggressive attempts to control media coverage of the Dakota Pipeline protests by local police bringing various charges against a reporter from Democracy Now (dismissed by a North Dakota judge) and preventing Unicorn Riot reporters from being at the protest.

As questions are raised about the steep decline in media truth finding in favour of uncritical headline-driven 'newstainment', journalist aren't helping themselves, as Jay Rosen points out. He calls out the abasement of journalism into accusation-driven rather than evidence-driven reporting, examples being coverage of various Trump lies (millions of illegal voters; financier George Soros' funding of anti-Trump protests)

If you are evidence-based you lead with the lack of evidence for explosive or insidious charges. That becomes the news. If you are accusation-driven, the news is that certain people are making charges. With the details we may learn that there's no evidence, but the frame in which that discovery is made remains 'he said, she said.'

There are many dangers and many problems and one evident, if incomplete, fix.

We have to turn elsewhere to find information, evidence and truth, and that may increasingly be our social networks. Instead of worrying about whether these networks are bubbles, we should use them to help uncover and proselytize accurate stories and fair and justified criticism.

An attack on your filter is an attack on your identity and the freedom to construct it. The attack discourages participation in radical groups or activist events, or otherwise associating with any identity categories and political movements outside the mainstream, for fear of contributing to the problem of “the bubble”. The attack encourages moderation in one’s identity and presentation so as to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. In other words, attacking the filter bubble serves to reinforce the mainstream center of politics and to silence dissent.

The principal enemy is fakery, careless and irresponsible journalism and public mistrust of it, partisan messaging chicanery, and the terror tactics of right-wing billionaires.

The partial antidote is sharing the truth with others in networks.

(2016)

]]>Now More Than Ever We Need Social InformationFilter Bubbles? Echo Chambers? We're not Sheep!Culture|PoliticsJournalismBoyd NeilSun, 20 Nov 2016 16:07:00 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/11/20/filter-bubbles-echo-chambers-lets-get-real5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5831b5b9d2b857e23a58c8b2Ever since Eli Pariser wrote about filter bubbles in 2012, pundits see bubbles and chambers everywhere especially after social shocks like Donald Trump's election. Every instance of supposed cohesiveness of opinion is attributed to bubbles. And they accuse echo chambers of every manner of problem.

In Wired shortly after the US election, Mostafa M. El-Bermawy claimed they are destroying democracy: "Rarely will our Facebook comfort zones expose us to opposing views, and as a result we eventually become victims to our own biases."

Three journalists reporting in The Guardian post-election asked a few people of different political orientations to swap Facebook news feeds to provide evidence that:

Criticism of the filter bubble, which gained steam after the UK’s surprising Brexit vote, has reached a new level of urgency in the wake of Donald Trump’s upset victory, despite Mark Zuckerberg’s denial it had any influence.

Given that most people tend to connect with people and organizations that share their views and values, it leads to people largely being surrounded with people who share their perspectives on things.

But what's the reality? Something much less derivative than Pariser's original conception, or the copy cat ideas of post-truth journalists or pundits.

Even Pariser himself suggests we need to be more circumspect about attributing every political or social earthquake to our supposed social-media-induced blindness to differing views.

One bubble we all live in is the idea that social media is a primary source of news for most people. In fact it’s still the case in 2016 that most Americans get their news from local TV news, according to Pew. So I actually think it’s very hard to attribute the results of this election to social media generally or the filter bubble in particular.

In fact, it's about time some academic researcher or journalist less easily led by received opinion actually investigated the truth of these reductive claims about filter bubbles and echo chambers.

Here are three contrary ideas to consider:

First, Pew Research recently found that, in fact, our Facebook and Twitter feeds contain a variety of opinions. The supposed homogenity of views on social media may be over-stated.

Second, our ideas are formed by a network of friends, family, online news, drama and movies, some of which are presented and discussed on social networks but others through offline conversation and social interaction. Because we choose not to hear Trump apologists in our news feeds, for example, does not mean we aren’t aware of Trumpist core ideas. I for one have read, heard, seen and discussed enough analysis of what Trump people are angry about to know I still don't sympathize with a racist and misogynistic reaction to real economic problems.

Third, even within a framework of broad agreement in our networks, there are nearly always nuances of interpretation. I may prefer to interact with people who hate what Trump stands for as I do, but I can disagree with their (a) analysis of which aspect of his program is most deleterious (b) how to combat his world of hate (c) how close we are to a similar racist and homophobic populism in Canada (d) whether the Conservative Party in Canada harbors Trump sycophants (it does). All of these circumscribe legitimate differences of opinion that lead me and others to better-formed, considered and in the end less one-sided views.

So spare me the reductive analysis that we are all trapped meekly in echo chambers in which our ability to think and analyze is always diminished.

(2016)

]]>Filter Bubbles? Echo Chambers? We're not Sheep!Social Reshapes ElectionsCulture|PoliticsJournalismSocial ActivismBoyd NeilTue, 15 Nov 2016 16:31:43 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/11/14/social-and-elections5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:582a307d59cc68ecd26e4692The US election was for many reasons historic, not the least of them the election to the presidency of a quasi-fascist. (I only say 'quasi' because he hasn't yet taken office.) Once again, social media's role in influencing, or not, the information and political panorama trundled through post-election rhetoric.

I think these three articles and one research study summarize best the issues and debate, and provide perspectives with which I agree.

Philip Howard, Professor of Internet Studies. at Oxford feels this has been a big year for what he calls "computational propaganda", essentially algorithms on social networks like Facebook and Twitter that drive fake news and selective exposure to opinions, facts and ideas.

We’ve always relied on many kinds of sources for our political news and information. Family, friends, news organizations, charismatic politicians certainly predate the internet. But whereas those are sources of information, social media now provides the structure for political conversation. And the problem is that these technologies permit too much fake news, encourage our herding instincts, and aren’t expected to provide public goods.

His recommendations are novel and include having knowledgeable third parties audit social media algorithms, adjust algorithms so they introduce higher quality information, and "moral leadership from within social media firms"

Questions have popped up frequently about the role that Facebook's algorithms play in spreading misinformation. The questions gained prominence when it was learned during the US election that a number of articles, including one in a fake newspaper called the Denver Guardian claiming that the Pope supported Donald Trump, spread widely on Facebook. Zuckerberg denies the claims, arguing that it is a "crazy idea" that his social platform could influence the outcome of the election and that in any case it would favour balance.

Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information, contends convincingly that Zuckerberg's claims are simply not true, and that the misinformation wasn't balanced between the candidates but, in fact, benefited Trump:

Of course, fake news alone doesn’t explain the outcome of this election. People vote the way they do for a variety of reasons, but their information diet is a crucial part of the picture.

After the election, Mr. Zuckerberg claimed that the fake news was a problem on “both sides” of the race. That’s wrong. There are, of course, viral fake anti-Trump memes, but reporters have found that the spread of false news is far more common on the right than it is on the left.

As always, Pew research provides the data playground for analysis of social influence over what we think and how we decide. The three charts below capture the social-politics zeitgeist and speak for themselves.

Analysts monitoring the social media activity of both campaigns on the major social media channels saw the outcome of this election coming months ago, and kept talking about the massive silent voter base that was forming around the Republican nominee. Social media analysts continually sounded the alarm that all of the polls were not reflecting the actual situation on the ground in the pre-election landscape.

Social media is today's public square, so why should it be surprising that it's also the place we can learn what people suppose and feel?

(2016)

]]>Social Reshapes ElectionsShame, ShameCommunicationDigital StrategyBoyd NeilSat, 15 Oct 2016 18:55:12 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/10/15/shaming-video.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3185Ryerson University's The Chang School created this video to promote a presentation I was giving last winter as part of its Masters Series.

I just came across it on YouTube, so I thought I would share it here in a blatant act of self promotion.

Since I don't take selfies, I should be forgiven.

(2016)

]]>Shame, ShameReddit as Focus Group?Boyd NeilWed, 28 Sep 2016 19:29:23 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/9/28/reddit-as-focus-group.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3184The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has turned to Reddit as one of its feedback channels for consultations on differential pricing. The CRTCis the Canadian administrative body that "regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in the public interest".

It's a slightly controversial move—as is its proposed charging of different prices for different types of data traffic—given the often aggressive and brutal nature of commentary on Reddit, the digital community that wants to help people "discover places where they can be their true selves."

Sometimes these 'true selves' can be not so pretty.

But it's worth the risk to try reaching an audience that is sometimes indifferent even to such issues as net neutrality in which it should have an interest. There aren't many ways to reach Millennials and Gen Z when you want to consult on public interest subjects. Telephone surveys are largely ineffectual. Gathering social intelligence through online monitoring works better. Crowdsourced comment on native platforms like Reddit may be one answer, albeit risky and tricky.

We'll see. I hope the CRTC singles out the Reddit probe for detailed analysis in its final public hearings.

(2016)

]]>Reddit as Focus Group?Exponential ActivismCommunicationCulture|PoliticsDigital StrategySocial ActivismBoyd NeilTue, 16 Aug 2016 13:21:44 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/8/16/exponential-activism.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3182This is a presentation I made in June to the 6th Annual Social Media and Law Conference in Toronto about something I call 'exponential activism'.

By exponential activism I mean the power of individuals to mobilize around a social issue and to see a rapid growth of support—under certain condiditons—from what Margetts, John, Yale and Yaseri call call 'tiny acts of political participation'.

The presentation challenges those who dismiss online activism as 'slacktivism' using theories about new political turbulence and provides a guide for organizations to identify and manage social web mobilization targeted at them.

That's still to be figured out. But digital sage Shel Holtz held a webinar (I couldn't attend) in April urging communications professionals to examine them because:

Chatbots will play a big and important role in all corners of PR and corporate communications. Chatbots are a future arriving like a freight train that has lost its brakes.

There are likely more, although I can't think of them, but here are three roles for communicators in the developing chatbot ecosystem, themselves enough reason for PR and marketing skeptics to acknowledge, explore and examine them.

Coding the conversation

No offence to software engineers, but building a human interaction should be the province of people who can lend conversations charm and neighborliness and—since marketers will be all over them—a consistent brand voice. Coding the chatbot conversation will, or should, have the feel of a story, with give-and-take, not a messaged interaction or rote response.

Digital strategy integration

Chatbot use should be part of a 360 degree digital strategy, not just a standalone customer service tool. And digital strategies should be about humanizing the interplay between an organization and its customers, constituents, advocates or stakeholders. The 'human', not the code, has to lead chatbot development.

Managing the problems

Microsoft learned the hard way with Tay that we are a long way from a discerning machine intelligence that can avoid human flaws like racism and misogyny. Faced with a crisis in which harm has been caused many executives still have trouble manifesting empathy or making an apology, even when evidence supports doing both. As Tay unfortunately showed, the chances of causing toxic offence with machine or rule-based dialogue are huge. Chatbot owners need to be ready for the inescapable obnoxious and embarrassing conversation mistakes.

(2016)

]]>Chatbots are SocialTwitter 101Digital StrategyBoyd NeilWed, 03 Aug 2016 12:05:18 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/8/3/twitter-101.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3181I'm posting this Twitter 101 checklist from Sprout Social as a resource for my college and university social media students . . . others who expect from me weighty social observations are welcome to ignore it :)]]>Twitter 101Enough Already! Online Activism Works!CommunicationCulture|PoliticsDigital StrategySocial ActivismBoyd NeilFri, 03 Jun 2016 15:04:11 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/6/3/enough-already-online-activism-works.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b317c

When feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez wanted to challenge the Bank of England's decision to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on the five-pound note, she turned to the social web as her toolkit.

With 35,000 signatures on a Change.org online petition, extensive support for her on Twitter, a demonstration in front of the Bank mobilized through Twitter, and widespread media coverage resulting from the online profile of the campaign, the Bank's new governor (Canadian Mark Carney) changed its decision and announced that the image of Jane Austen would appear on the ten-pound note in 2017.

I'm led to point this out because of a challenge thrown at me yesterday. I was on a panel at the 2016 Public Affairs Association of Canada annual conference ('The Art & Science of Public Affairs—Digital Disruption') discussing the emergence of digital storytelling within advocacy campaigns and was interrogated, rather combatively, to point to evidence (or 'data' as the interlocutor put it) of successful change efforts intermediated by social agitation.

Since the French's Ketchup Facebook campaign failed to convince, I'm posting a short list here of a few more digitally supported campaigns that put the lie to the idea that online crusades (or what the University of Oxford's Helen Magrett and her colleagues call 'tiny acts of political participation') can't result in meaningful change, especially if combined with offline action

In case such campaigns as #BlackLivesMatter, #OccupyWallStreet,#I Can'tBreathe, #EricGarner, #MikeBrown and #HandsUpDon'tShoot aren't evidence enough of the impact of social web-based political mobilization, then here are three more:

A 217,000 person petition asking Mars, Incorporated to stop using artifical dyes in M&Ms because of their effect on hyperactivity saw Mar's President and CEO announce in February 2016: “Our consumers are the boss and we hear them. If it’s the right thing to do for them, it’s the right thing to do for Mars”, and agree to remove the offending dyes from its products including M&Ms.

In 2013 the Kitsilano Coast Guard base was closed by the Canadian Conservative Party, an unpopular deicison. After public outcry including 11,000 signatures on a Change.org petition, a Facebook campaign and support from local municipal politicians, the base was reopened two months ago.

The one thing I know more than the sun is coming up tomorrow is that marketers ruin everything. As a proud marketer, it's what we do.

A successful marketer, entrepreneur and author (Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, #ASKGARYVEE), Vaynerchuk will find nothing to disagree with in a recent social insights study from Sprout Social that tracks how far most companies are from satisfylng consumers with their social media campaigns and strategies. According to the study, "brand behaviours don't even come close to syncing up with people's expectations on social."

Why?

Because marketers can't seem to get their minds around the idea that consumers want less and less to be pushed product, shouted at or marketed to.They don't crave more promotional content.

Instead they want to hear from the company when they ask a question or identify a problem.

Yet according to this insights study only 11% of consumers receive a reply when they get in touch with a company through social media — the preferred route by the way — about an issue, problem or question.

Recently, I posted a simple question to American Standard Canada on Facebook about the availability of one of their products. A few days later I received this response (admittedly a better response time than for many brands).

I did . . . they didn't. I bought a different product.

The study evidences what I think of as a social strategy investment disconnect. Money is splashed into creative online marketing campaigns, when a few more dollars could profitably be channeled into active social media customer service and social network community management. What such an approach lacks in glitter, will be made up for in affinity between people and brands.

And maybe while they're at it why not swell that reinvestment a little by shifing dollars from the hard sell and promotion to telling stories that startle with emotion, empathy, and delight . . .

And, yes, reply when asked.

As Sprout Social says:

While brands view Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as broadcast outlets for pumping out promotional content, consumers recognize these social channels for what they truly are: powerful portals for two-way dialogue.

]]>PR in the 21st CenturyCommunicationDigital StrategyBoyd NeilWed, 11 May 2016 18:35:22 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/5/11/pr-in-the-21st-century.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3179Anyone who has known me professionally or as a university and college sessional instructor will not be taken aback when I say I find one of the data points in the chart below not in the least surprising.

Another is a bit perplexing though.

The USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations released its Global Communications Study last month on the opinions of 460 global in-house and agency public relations executives about the future of the PR industry. (Curiously only a third of the respondents who began the online survey finished it! What's that about?)

The chart (mine) below summarizes their views on one important matter—the specific services that will drive future growth in the PR industry.

The study reports:

When asked about specific services that will drive future growth, agency and client-side respondents were focused on increased demand for content creation (81%) and social media (75%), as well as more traditional activities such as brand reputation (70%), followed by measurement and evaluation (60%).

Traditional media relations still ranks relatively high for both corporate and agency leaders (55%). However, advertising/paid media (18%) ranked last of 18 possible growth drivers.

From my frame of reference having transitioned 10 years ago from 20-odd years as a PR counselor to a digital strategist, I have often—too often?—argued that with a few agency and in-house exceptions PR lagged only public affairs in having had an obtuse disregard for the shift from media relations to digital that began, yes, about 10 years ago.

After rejecting for years that media relations could be anything but core to PR, practitioners now appear willing to rank it where it belongs — not especially consequential as a growth driver.

But is the PR industry again blind to the next turn?

To rank advertising/paid media last out of 18 possible growth drivers is to misunderstand where social influence and relationships, content programs, reputation strategies, and social network architecture are heading.

Communication strategies today start with objectives like uncovering and nurturing influencers, fitting together networks and relationships, and conceiving content that rocks and changes behaviour. Often that depends on integrated social interaction and paid approaches, and certainly art and design skills now still found predominantly in creative agencies.

PR teams and PR agencies wanting to engineer relationships with audiences and influencers will have to come to terms with the fact that when you are talking about sculpting communities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and Pinterest . . . visualize earned and paid.

Americans want business leaders to "address company vision", "company products and services" and "customer service issues/experience" when they post, tweet or share on social media.

Forget the "personal stories and anecdotes" and "professional development tips". Nobody apparently cares. So concludes the 2016 G&S Business Communications 2016 Global Street Fight Studyon leadership as outlined in the infographic below.

I don't believe it.

You mean to tell me that given everything we know about the pleasure and positive consequences on reputation, brand, and conversion of thoughtful and passionate storytelling, the numberless slivers of quality visual content available on Instagram, Pinterest, Ello, and SnapChat stories, and the ingenious design and imagery at hand at every turn online, that all we expect of leaders is the prosaic?

I think the study manifests a failure of survey respondent imagination. For the sake of everyone who uses social networks (all of us) or cares about igniting imagination, compassion or even interest, I hope every content strategist ignores it.

But there is some good news for creative content producers—and for CEOs who can't write or think visually—thankfully 72% of people don't care if you use a ghostwriter or jobbing designer.

So, let writers, videographers, graphic designers and cartoonists take no notice of what people say they want and give them what we know in our hearts works.

]]>Twitter Minutes on MobileBoyd NeilThu, 28 Apr 2016 18:50:43 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/4/28/twitter-minutes-on-mobile.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3176Twitter is repeatedly in the news—or at least the news that digital marketers and social media strategists pay attention to—for being on its death bed. The reasons vary (poor revenues, declining user base, failure to innovate, boring logo, you name it).

But such numbers don't tell us much about who is using Twitter and how.

They tell us nothing about the relative social, cultural or political value of Twitter content compared to Instagram or Snapchat for example, or how influential Twitter is as a pathway to news, ideas, cultural experiences, cutting edge comedy or causes.

And how about the role Twitter plays in necessary social activism — exposing abuses of power, focusing attention on hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter, coordinating protest and building political support (#FeeltheBern).

I wonder of that 2.7 minutes a day spent on Twitter what part is devoted to seeing breaking news, watching video clips of emerging music or visual artists, tracking causes or exchanging points of view.

Maybe it's not so bad if Twitter lets Facebook and the others have the product pitches, the superficial and routine, the mundane and banal to fill up the other 57.9 minutes of social media time per day.

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities.

The argument goes that our social networks have us talking only to people like ourselves, people with whom we usually agree. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram homogenize ideas and limit our awareness of differing points of view. (Sherry Turkle is worried about it anyway—an unfortunate misstep in her book.)

But echo chambers are not simply, nor even predominantly, a technology problem. Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written about how our 'groupishness' or hive behaviour pushes toward similarity rather than difference — hence the subtitle of his most recent book 'Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion'.

This leads me to two points:

Social networks are no more to blame for our susceptibility to 'group think' than religious or political dogma. Take a look at how easily some are swayed by Donald Trump's frightening demagoguery.

The stories we tell on social, and the causes we take up even if only on social and not in the streets, do raise "other possibilities".

We are better off as a society knowing about and supporting #BlackLivesMatter, a social network phenomenon, than we are never using the hashtag or expressing our support even just in a tweet.

(2016)

]]>Shaming and Reputation (2)Boyd NeilThu, 11 Feb 2016 19:08:05 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/2/11/shaming-and-reputation-2.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3174My 'master class' is next week. This promotional video was developed by Ryerson to encourage (push?) attendance at the event. The video is cool, but I have to say it was one of the coldest days in the city and I had to stand in this square — hatless — for about an hour while it was shot.

(2016)

]]>Shaming and ReputationCommunicationCulture|PoliticsDigital StrategyBoyd NeilTue, 19 Jan 2016 12:44:58 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2016/1/19/shaming-and-reputation.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3173On Wednesday, February 17th I'll be conducting what's called a 'Master Class' under the auspices of Chang School Talks 2016 at Ryerson University.

The description below will be posted shortly on its website, but if you're in Toronto please attend and introduce yourself.

In this session Boyd Neil will look at the ways — both subtle and aggressive — we shame others on social media and how on social networks we so readily jump to judgment of individuals, corporations and organizations based only on rumour and innuendo. During the session, Boyd will share highlights of an original quantitative research on Canadian attitudes towards this kind of 'outing' on social.

Participants will be introduced to some strategies to protect their social presence before, during and after a shaming, and companies can use to defend their reputation when faced with a social web assault.

(2016)

]]>Video on ActivismCulture|PoliticsSocial ActivismBoyd NeilTue, 01 Dec 2015 21:19:25 +0000https://www.boydneil.com/blog/2015/12/1/video-on-activism.html5821cd7e5016e1bf5d3ebcea:5821d56735a11ada904b2f6f:5821d56735a11ada904b3172Although I might question the inclusion in this video of some events being called activism, as a whole it is well done and highlights some simple prinicples about activism — offline or online.
by jotreyes.

Pick any week in any month and you’ll likely sight a company or organization facing an issue or crisis that has the social web as its battlefield.

Hacks (Ashley Madison). Twitter rants (Tinder v. Vanity Fair). Twitter fights (Herbalife v. @AfueraHerbaLIES). Online shamings (Walter Palmer and Cecil the lion). . . . And that’s just a few weeks in the summer, and doesn’t include the ever-more-commonplace missteps (rudeness, incidental racism or sexism etc.) by social media community managers that don’t make it to the front pages of legacy media.

In crisis management we used to say there are those organizations that have faced a crisis and there are those that will. A bit glib for the time maybe. But with the social web today it verges on certainty. At some time, on some social platform someone will say something nasty about your organization (or you personally).

My colleague who runs our issues and crisis practice likes to remind me that the principles for effective crisis and issues management even on the social web don’t really change. And in large part she’s right. Be honest; be compassionate; and respond quickly, for example, apply in any crisis.

But there are some nuances with social that are worth keeping in mind.

Negativity on social is endemic. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram allow people to express pleasure or dissatisfaction with a person, product or service . . . and express it loudly and with, in many cases, a great deal of vitriol, even obscenity.

But many are just one-time-only outbursts, in which the damage to an organization’s or individual’s reputation MAY BE — and I stress MAY BE — minimal and not likely to last.

Not every nasty call to a customer hotline or angry consumer at the check out represents a reputational crisis, for example. In the same way, not every negative sentiment expressed on social media calls for a reaction, and not every comment that begs for a reaction represents a crisis.

Of course, the challenge for many organizations is assessing which comments are unusual, delimited or token and which ones can undercut years of organizational brand building.

Here are a few questions to help you assess the situation and come up with a response strategy:

Can the issue be taken offline for a resolution? Offline can put a halt to any social amplification

Is this the type of comment that might interest local or national media? Commenters often tag media in their post or tweet in an effort to get a company's attention. When print or broadcast media pick up a negative strain in social it becomes a 'story' and gains a heightened level of intensity.

Is the commenter or customer influential within his or her community? There are some easy tools—Klout among them—that give you a snapshot of whether someone's comment is worth paying attention to.

Is the commenter a serial complainer or over-active tweeter or poster? Their comments can sometimes get lost in their own noise.

Was the underlying problem our fault, or have we seen similar negative sentiment in the past that suggests an operational or reputation problem? You should fix it and say you are doing so . . . on the social platform being used for the complaint.

Can we apologize on social for the problem we’ve caused if that is the root of the adverse sentiment? An authentic and honest apology (see my blog post on how NOT to say it) is pivotal to protecting reputation.

Are we in a position to continue to trade comments with the source of the negative sentiment? You'll need writing resources that know how to manage social web dialogue.

Some of these questions are going to be difficult to answer if your organization is unfamiliar or uncomfortable with social web dynamics.

But this self-assessment, undertaken before you need it, may not only better prepare you to respond when the day comes that your name is being dragged through the social mud, but also educate you about what’s expected for effective social web interaction day-to-day.

The 2015 Digital Business Global Executive Study and Research Project by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte "identifies strategy, not technology, as the key driver of success in the digital arena."

In general it found:

(T)hat maturing digital businesses are focused on integrating digital technologies, such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud, in the service of transforming how their businesses work. Less-mature digital businesses are focused on solving discrete business problems with individual digital technologies.

The conclusion is as true of the way organizations manage social media strategies as it is for the wholesale digital transformation of processes and business systems — strategy trumps technology, in this case social platforms.

In my social media classes at various universities and colleges, I have to talk about the mechanics of posting and engaging on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Periscope etc., things like platform differentiation with respect to target audiences and behaviours and techniques for improving the use of the various tools ("How to Optimize Your Facebook Posts With Facebook Audience Insights").

These are some of the 'need-to-knows' for a digital practitioner.

But the technology nuts and bolts are like the focus on solving discrete business problems with individual digital technologies mentioned in this study.

They are not the knowledge backbone an organization needs to have a social program that works.

That's about theory — how social networks manoeuvre, flow and change; what influencers do in these networks; how influencers can be influenced; what makes content sharable; how social objectives map to specific business objectives; the dialectic between traditional media and social channels as pathways to information.

Solid digital theory generates mature strategies which lead to transformational social media programs, whether to sell a product, sway a constituency, or activate donors.